Campaign-Promises.com

By: Andy Barr
October 31, 2008 01:16 PM EST

Republican Sen. Ted Stevens told Alaska voters Thursday night that he has “not been convicted of anything” — less than a week after being found guilty on all seven counts at his corruption trial.

During a debate with Democratic opponent and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, Stevens insisted on his innocence and said that he intends to ignore calls from his Republican colleagues to resign.

“I’m not going to step down. I have not been convicted,” Stevens said according to a transcript provided by the Anchorage Daily News .

“I have a got a case pending against me, and probably the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct by the prosecutors that is known. I had a talk this afternoon, with one of the attorneys here, a former U.S. attorney, who told me he was appalled by what went on in that case. So I think you’ll find out. I will succeed, and I will be found innocent.”

Stevens has previously said that he intends to appeal, but he did not mention that option during Thursday’s debate, instead stressing, inaccurately, that he had not been convicted.

Several GOP party leaders, including John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have asked Stevens to step down in hopes of preserving his historically red Senate seat.

Polls taken prior to the conviction showed Begich already within striking distance of the seat Stevens has held since 1968.

On Wednesday, Sen. John Ensign, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, urged Stevens to “do the right thing” and resign.

“The statesman-like thing for Sen. Stevens would be to resign,” Ensign said in an interview on MSNBC. “I would like to see a special election in the state of Alaska so they can actually choose between a Republican and a Democrat running to see who they want to represent them in the United States Senate.”

“Sen. Stevens should do the right thing and resign so that we can have a special election to determine the best way to represent the people of the state of Alaska,” he added.

Asked what he would say to McCain and Palin in response to their calls for his resignation, Stevens said, “I would tell them that I understand that they make statements during the heat of the campaign. And probably they’ve been a little misinformed by their staff. But I wouldn’t hold it against them. I understand what they’re doing. They’re trying to get elected.”

“The case is still pending on the basis of motions which we filed for a new trial or for a dismissal of the case for prosecutorial misconduct,” he said. “I have not been convicted of anything.”

© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC

Popularity: 39% [?]

Thursday, October 30, 2008 12:25 PM

By: David A. Patten

Sen. Barack Obama bought his eye-popping, prime-time TV extravaganza with $4 million and something else: “It was paid for with broken promises,” says Sen. John McCain.

McCain is slamming Obama for breaking pledges to abide by campaign finance reform and accept public financing for his campaign.

“When you’re watching this gauzy, feel-good commercial, just remember that it was paid for with broken promises,” McCain said Wednesday evening. “Twice he looked the American people in the eye and said he would sit down with me before he abandoned public financing. He didn’t mean a word of it. When it was in his interest to break his promise, he tossed it aside like it didn’t mean a thing.”

Obama’s campaign “is now being flooded with hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed and questionable donations,”McCain said.

Obama’s June flip-flop on financing drew sharp criticism from some quarters but not generally from the mainstream media. Conservative direct-marketing guru Richard Viguerie told Newsmax the shift is part of a larger pattern.

“The facts of life are that Senator Obama makes decisions that help advance his career, and promises and relationships are to be discarded if they interfere with his ambitions,” Viguerie said.

Obama is the first presidential candidate to opt out of the public system of financing presidential campaigns. That system, which is designed to reduce the influence of huge campaign contributions on presidential politics, would have limited Obama to the same $85 million that McCain received when he accepted public financing.

When Obama announced his decision in June to reverse course and reject public financing, his aides confided privately that it could mar Obama’s image as a reformer offering a new brand of politics.

At the time, Obama blamed his decision on McCain and the GOP. “We’ve already seen that [McCain] is not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies’ running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations,” Obama said.

Viguerie rejects that explanation as “nothing more than a small and transparent fig leaf.”

Obama’s decision to reject public financing was a sharp reversal from earlier promises:

Popularity: 36% [?]

By CALVIN WOODWARD
Wed Oct 29, 9:18 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.

Obama’s assertion that “I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond” the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by “eliminating programs that don’t work” masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are ‚Äî beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn’t tell them:

THE SPIN: “That’s why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year.”

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it’s not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

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THE SPIN: “I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care.”

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured: “I want to start doing something about it.” He would mandate coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers.

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THE SPIN: “I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost.”

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama’s policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years ‚Äî and that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: “Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next 10 years.” The analysis goes on to say: “Neither candidate’s plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified.”

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THE SPIN: “Here’s what I’ll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we’ll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open. ”

THE FACTS: His proposals ‚Äî the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more ‚Äî cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged ‚Äî although not in his commercial ‚Äî that: “The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals.”

Popularity: 24% [?]

(CNN) — You may have heard that Wednesday night Barack Obama will be on five different TV networks speaking directly to the American people.

He bought 30 minutes of airtime from the different networks, a very expensive purchase. But hey, he can afford it. Barack Obama is loaded, way more loaded than John McCain, way more loaded than any presidential candidate has ever been at this stage of the campaign.

Just to throw a number out: He has raised well over $600 million since the start of his campaign, close to what George Bush and John Kerry raised combined in 2004.

Without question, Obama has set the bar at new height with a truly staggering sum of cash. And that is why as we approach this November, it is worth reminding ourselves what Barack Obama said last November.

One year ago, he made a promise. He pledged to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits.

Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word.

He broke his promise and he explained it by arguing that the system is broken and that Republicans know how to work the system to their advantage. He argued he would need all that cash to fight the ruthless attacks of 527s, those independent groups like the Swift Boat Veterans. It’s funny though, those attacks never really materialized.

The courageous among Obama’s own supporters concede this decision was really made for one reason, simply because it was to Obama’s financial advantage.

On this issue today, former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, an Obama supporter, writes in The New York Post, “a hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue — who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. And that, it seems to me, is what we are doing now.”

For this last week, Sen. Obama will be rolling in dough. His commercials, his get-out-the-vote effort will, as the pundits have said, dwarf the McCain campaign’s final push. But in fairness, you have to admit, he is getting there in part on a broken promise.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Campbell Brown.

Popularity: 29% [?]

By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS

Both presidential candidates say their plans would provide health insurance to millions of people who lack it. The problem is cost: With the federal budget deficit growing, Congress is likely to look at more limited and incremental moves to expand coverage.

Outside analysts have come up with widely varying numbers. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center projected that in the first year of full implementation, about 1.3 million uninsured people would gain coverage through the McCain plan and about 18 million would under Sen. Obama’s structure. Lewin Group, a consulting firm that is a unit of health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc., gave Sen. McCain credit for 21 million and Sen. Obama for 26.6 million people.

The candidates’ plans would likely reach different subsets of the uninsured. Sen. McCain’s would change a key aspect of the employer-based health-insurance system that has long prevailed in the U.S. He would make workers pay income tax on health benefits they get from their employers, while providing tax credits of $2,500 per person, or $5,000 per family, to defray the cost of health insurance.

Sen. McCain’s plan may particularly help young, healthy people who lack insurance. Because they are inexpensive to insure, the tax credit might be enough to allow them to purchase insurance on the individual market. Sen. McCain has said he also will help those who can’t get coverage because of a pre-existing illness.

Sen. Obama would require large and midsize employers to offer health benefits, or pay a fee. He wants to create a health-insurance marketplace that would include a new federal plan as a coverage option. He would force insurers to sell a plan to anyone who applies for coverage. He would provide subsidies for lower- and middle-income people to buy coverage and expand programs for the poor, making these groups among the biggest beneficiaries of his plan.

The Tax Policy Center projects that Sen. McCain’s proposal would cost $185 billion in its first year, and $1.3 trillion over a decade; the numbers for Sen. Obama’s plan were $86 billion and $1.6 trillion, respectively. The Lewin 10-year-cost estimate for Sen. McCain was $2.05 trillion and for Sen. Obama $1.17 trillion.

Jonathan Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has advised Democratic candidates including Sen. Obama, said the McCain plan, with its tax credits, amounts to a “vast new expenditure.”

Mr. Holtz-Eakin, the McCain adviser, said the Republican candidate’s plan is “budget neutral” because it anticipates savings from new efficiencies in health care including attacking fraud in Medicare. “The notion that somehow it falls short [of budget neutrality] is something we would contest,” he said. “We do believe we have something that will be fiscally responsible and get lots of people into coverage.”

The Obama campaign has said it plans to use money from ending the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans to help pay for its plan. It also cites savings from better technology and other improvements to the health-care system.

If the victorious candidate presents his health-care plan to Congress, such optimistic projections will face a stern test at the Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s fiscal scorekeeper. The office’s estimate of the actual cost of the plans would form the basis for debate, and legislators would face a huge barrier approving any plan assigned a $1 trillion-plus price tag over 10 years.

In the short term, Democrats in Congress may focus on more limited steps such as expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is jointly funded by federal and state governments. A bill that would have increased funding for the program by $35 billion over five years was vetoed last year by President Bush. The legislation would have paid for the spending by raising the federal tobacco tax.

Popularity: 16% [?]

By BRIAN ROSS and MOLLY DEAN

October 27, 2008—

His relationship with Sen. Barack Obama has become a major theme of the McCain campaign.

His background with a 1960′s domestic terror group, the Weather Underground, has been recounted in hundreds of news articles.

His words could add to the evidence that debunks the claims Obama was “palling around with terrorists.”

But Bill Ayers is staying mum, and working hard to duck reporters and the campaign spotlight in the final week before the election.

He told a journalism student attending a education justice symposium in New York Sunday he and other former radicals were being “demonized” by Fox News. “We’re nice guys, right?”

Asked by the student, if he repudiated the actions of the Weather Underground, which carried out a series of 1960′s robberies and bombings that killed at least six people, Ayers walked away without answering.

Ayers declined requests for an interview from ABC News, and after the appearance in New York, he used a garbage-littered freight elevator in an unsuccessful attempt to duck ABC News cameras waiting outside.

(Watch the video here!)

“I have nothing to say,” he told ABC News as he left the building, accompanied by several burly men in dark suits.

Asked about Sen. John McCain’s description of him as a “washed up terrorist,” Ayers said nothing as he raced to find a taxi.

Ayers appeared as an “artist” at a forum devoted to dealing with issues including educational injustice.

Organizers of the event attempted to stop media coverage by falsely claiming Ayers’ appearance had been canceled.

Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, made no mention of his radical past or Sen. Obama during an hour and a half presentation to a group of about 50 people attending the Harold Clurman Festival of the Arts.

Obama served on the board of an education reform group with Ayers in Chicago, where both men were prominent figures.

When Obama first ran for public office, in 1995, Ayers held a fundraiser for him at his house, according to a February 2008 article on Politico.com.

In an interview with ABC News, Obama told Charlie Gibson, “This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old.”

Obama said he had talked with Ayers about school reform issues, but said, “the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that I’ve palled around a terrorist, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”

Charges against Ayers were dropped in the 1970′s after revelations of illegal FBI wiretapping.

Popularity: 21% [?]